Sachin Bansal to Start a Holding Company for Investing in AgriTech and Fintech Ventures

Poster boy of Indian entrepreneurs, Sachin Bansal, post exiting Flipkart, which he co-founded back in 2007, is all set to start his second innings as an investor, mentor for startups and entrepreneurs and for same he has reportedly establishing a holding company through which he will run his new businesses and make investments as well.

A holding company is a company that owns other companies’ outstanding stock and it usually does not produce goods or services itself instead its purpose is to own shares of other companies to form a corporate group. In few of advantages of a holding company are — to consolidate its compliance and financial risks, minimize its tax, and facilitate opportunities for growth.

According to a report by Madhav Chanchani, Economic Times, Sachin Bansal has roped in investment banke, as a partner and founding employee of the proposed holding firm.

Bansal, who exited Flipkart in May following Walmart’s acquisition of a majority stake in it, will directly operate his new businesses as well as invest for large minority and majority stakes in the agri-tech and fintech segments, these people said.

Although the exact time as when will they both launch this proposed holding firm is not clear yet however the focus of the company will agri-tech and fintech segments as these are two of the most emerging technology segmemts in India. Bansal is expected to deploy a large chunk of his capital in these two sectors.

Agarwal was until recently was a director at Bank of America, where he worked on interest rate trading. Prior to that, he was employed with Deutsche Bank.

Sachin Bansal, who sold his 5.5% stake in Flipkart for about $1 billion when Walmart acquired a 77% stake in the e-commerce firm, is expected to have pocket $750-760 million from the stake sale after deducting taxes.

Since then, Bansal has been busy evaluating investments in India’s internet ventures and a number of reports and speculations are going around including his plan start venture capital fund of up to $1 billion for investing in startups as well as considering launching an artificial intelligence (AI) startup.

Before Flipkart got acquired by Walmart, both the co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, had quietly incorporated a new company called ‘Sabin Advisors’ in January this year. The company, which still exist, was reportedly for new businesses and was expected to include venture capital funding and insurance. But eventually Walmart came in to the scene and overtook everything and the Sabin Advisor plan didn’t took off as expected.

Now in a dramatic and unpredictable sequence, Sachin Bansal has parted his ways with Binny Bansal professionally and is said to have partnered with Ankit Agarwal, who like Binny is too his colleague in his alma mater IIT-Delhi.

Last month it was also reported that Sachin may invest $100 million in homegrown cab hailing firm Ola in what would be called as biggest investment in personal capacity. Ola’s founder Bhavish Aggarwal is said to be very close to Bansal and they both enjoys a good rapport with each other.

Earlier this month, it was also reported that Bansal is in talks to invest about $30 million in electric bike maker Ather Energy, in which he is a board member.

Notably, Bansal is already an investor in a fintech startup Sigtuple along with Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, who resigned fro Flipkart this month.